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Copy 1 CORRESPONDENCE 



IJ E T W E E N 



S. TEACKLE WALLIS, Esq. 

Of* Baltimore, 



AND THE 



Hon. JOHN SHERMAN, 

Of tlie XJ. S. Senate, 

(X)NCERNINa THE AllRES'J' OF 

M[MB[RS OF THf MARYLAND LfGISLATURF, 



AND THE 



MAYOR AND POLICE COMMISSIONERS 

V 

OP BALTIMORE, IN 1861. 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY KELLY, HEDT 

PUBLISHEKS, BOOKSELLERS ANI' 
No. l'i4B.\LTIM0UK 

1863. 



< 



I 



CORRESPONDENCE 



BETWEEN 



S. TEACKLE WALLIS, Esq 

Of Baltimore, 



AND THE 



Hon. JOHN SHERMAN, 

Of the U. S. Senate, 



CONCERNING THE ARREST OF 



MlMefBS or Tll[ MARYUND [[GISL&TURl, 



AND THE 



MAYOU AND POLICE COMMISSIONERS 

OP BALTIMORE, IN 1861. 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY KELLY, HEDIAN & PTET, 

PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS AND STATIONERS, 

No. 174 Baltimore Street. 
1863. 



MR. WALLIS TO MR. SHERMAN. 



Baltimore, December 12, 1862. 
Hon. John Sherman, United States Senate : 

Sir : — In the report of proceedings of the Senate on the 9th instant, 
in the debate on the resolution of Senator Saulsbury, my attention has 
been called to the following paragraph : 

"He (Mr. Sherman, of Ohio) believed, however, that the President 
had power to make arrests without the forms of law. In the case of Dr. 
Bachelder and the members of the Maryland Legislatiire, who were about to 
carry their State out of the Union, he thought the President was justified 
in making the arrests." 

I was a member of the Maryland Legislature in 1861, and was arrested 
at midnight, at my dwelling, in the city of Baltimore, about the middle of 
September, in that year, from which time until the 27th of November, 
1862, I was confined in one or other of the fortresses of the United States 
which have been appropriated by Mr. Lincoln to the uses of State prisons. 
I have never, at any time, been informed of the grounds upon which 
I was arrested, and I know positively nothing whatever in regard to them, 
at this moment, except what I have seen stated, from time to time, in the 
newspapers. 

The commission, consisting of Messrs. Dix and Pierrepoint, which was 
created by the Secretary of War for the examination of the cases of pris- 
oners arrested and confined like myself, held a session at Fort Warren in 
May, 1862, but I was not vouchsafed any communication as to the charges 
against me, or any opportunity of being heard in my own defence, although 
the War Department had been officially notified some time before by Colo- 
nel Dimick, upon the report of my physician, that my health was seriously 
affected by my confinement. The commissioners, in fact, took no notice 
whatever of my existence. Counsel I was not permitted to employ, for as 
early as the 28th of November, 1861, the United States Marshal at Boston 
officially visited Fort Warren for the purpose of communicating to my 
fellow-prisoners and myself an order from Mr. Seward, the Secretary of 
State^ announcing that no one would be recognized by his department 
(which then had charge of us) as attorney of any State prisoner, and that 
the employment of counsel by any of us would be regarded by him as a suf- 
ficient reason for the prolongation of our imprisonment. On the 27th of 
November ultimo, as I have said, I was released from Fort Warren, with- 
out conditions or explanations of any sort. The authority for my discharge 
— as, I suppose, the authority for my arrest — was a telegram. Under 
these circumstances I am sure you will recognize it as no more than 



reasonable, that I should take some interest in not being misrepresented, 
after having been for so long arbitrarily and cruelly dealt with in my 
person . 

While I was a prisoner at Fort Warren, I saw, by accident, in the Daily 
Congressional Globe, a speech delivered in the House of Representatives, 
on the 11th of March, 1862, by the Hon. John Hickman, of Pennsylva- 
nia, in which he stated, iqyon the authority, as he said, of the President of 
the United States, that " Mr. Lincoln had thought it advisable to incarce- 
rate the Maryland Legislature to prevent them from enacting an ordinance 
of secession, and carrying the State out of the Union." " The President 
thought," as Mr. Hickman further said, "that legislators were about to 
meet at Frederick with resolutions of secession in their pockets, and that, 
if left unmolested, it was not unlikely a resohttion of secession might actu- 
ally be passed by the Legislature of Maryland. He, therefore, as a matter 
of extreme caution, thought it better to arrest the members of the Legislature 
and put them in jail. '^ 

My companions and myself were, of course, debarred by our situation, 
when this speech appeared, from all opportunity of joining issue with Mr. 
Lincoln upon the truth of the fact which it was thus stated that he had 
assumed as a sufficient reason not only for suppressing, by force, the Legis- 
lature of a State of the Union, but for inflicting upon us, personally, the 
wrong of unlawful imprisonment, and indignities and indecencies which it 
would cause you shame and disgust for me to describe. What Mr. Hick- 
man stated to have been merely an apprehension of the President's — a 
thing he deemed ' ' not unlikely " — you are now reported to have asserted 
as a matter of fact. I see, by the report for yesterday's proceedings, that 
one of your brother Senators — Mr. Fessenden — appears to have repeated 
the same charge, in almost the identical language employed by you, and is 
represented as not only asserting his own belief in its truth, but as having 
added that "^the President had, no doubt, evidence which led him to the 
same belief." 

Such statements, publicly made by prominent Senators, in their places, 
in open debate, would entitle the fact asserted to be hereafter assumed as 
true, if none of the parties interested, who are now at liberty and who 
know it to be untrue, were not to give it public contradiction. The duty of 
doing this devolves upon myself, at least as imperatively as upon any other 
member of the Legislature referred to, because I was Chairman of the 
Committee on Federal Relations in the House of Delegates, and the matter 
in question, as I will take leave to show you, was brought particularly 
within the scope of my official knowledge and action in that capacity. I 
can readily understand how you and others may have been misled by the 
falsehoods which were so widely circulated through the press in regard to 
my colleagues and myself, while our voices were silenced by force, and I 
cheerfully assume that, as a Senator or a gentleman, you would not have 
made the statement of which I complain, unless you had believed it to be 
well founded. I trust I may equally assume that you will have pleasure 
in the opportunity of repairing the injustice which you have done us, in 
giving it circulation upon your authority. 

The special session of the Legislature of Maryland, called by Governor 
Hicks in 1861, was opened in Frederick on the 26th of April in that year. 
On the next day, April 27, a select committee of the Senate reported to 
that body an address to the people of Maryland, which on the same day 



was unanimously adopted, and was shortly afterwards published, with the 
individual signatures of the Senators, in all the newspapers of the State. 

The principal feature of that address, in fact almost the only purpose of 
its promulgation, is developed in the following extract : 

' ' We cannot but know that a large portion of the citizens of Maryland 
have been induced to believe that there is a probability that our delibera- 
tions may result in the passage of some measure committing this State to 
secession. It is, therefore, our duty to declare that all such fears are 
without just foundation. We knoio that ice have no constitutional authority 
to taJce such action. You need not fear that there is a possibility that we 
will do so. 

" If believed by us to be desired by you, we may, by legislation to that 
effect, give you the opportunity of deciding for yourselves your own future 
destiny. We may go thus far, but certainly will go no further." 

You will find the whole address on pages 8 and 9 of the printed journal 
of the Senate, which is no doubt accessible to you in the library of Con- 
gress. It could not be more clear than it is upon the point in dispute. 
On the 29th day of April, the day after the address was communicated to 
the House of Delegates by the Senate, an opportunity was aflforded for the 
House to announce its own conclusions, in the most direct and unequivocal 
manner, upon the constitutional authority of the Legislature to alter the 
federal relations of the State. On page 19 of the printed journal of the 
House of Delegates you will find that, on the day last named, a memorial 
was presented "from 216 voters of Prince George's county, praying the 
Legislature (if in its judgment it possesses the power) to pass an ordinance 
of secession without delay." 

This memorial was at once referred to the Committee on Federal Rela- 
tions. Desirous of putting the question at rest, as it was then greatly 
agitating the public mind, the committee determined to report upon it 
before the adjournment. There was no difference of opinion among the 
members of the committee as to reporting unfavorably to the prayer of the 
memorialists, nor, with five out of seven, was there any doubt as to the 
propriety of stating, explicitly, as the ground of our recommendation, that 
the measure proposed was unconstitutional. Two reports were accordingly 
made. You will find them both on page 21 of the House journal. That 
of the majority, which I myself signed and presented, as chairman of the 
committee, contains the declaration, in words, "that in their judgment 
the Legislature does not 2}ossess the power to pass such an ordinance as is 
prayed, and that the prayer of the memorialists cannot, therefore, be 
granted." The minority report asks leave simply to " report unfavorably 
to the prayer of the memorialists." 

With the concurrence of the whole committee, I stated to the House the 
difference of opinion which had caused two reports to be made, and the 
importance of having the deliberate sense of the House, on the question, 
announced to the people at once. The grounds upon which it was beKeved 
to be beyond the constitutional authority of the Legislature to pass an 
ordinance of secession, were then briefly stated, and a test vote thereupon 
was taken, by common understanding, on the minority report, which 
received only thirteen votes to fifty-three. The majority report was then 
adopted without a division. From that time, down to the forcible sup- 
pression of the Legislature by Mr. Lincoln's orders, the subject was never 
again mooted, but was considered, on all hands, as absolutely and perma- 



nently disposed of. Without pretending to know what was in the breast 
of every member, I know enough to assert, in the most unhesitating man- 
ner, my belief that, at the time of our arrest, no individual, of either 
House, had a thought of again recurring to it. I positively know that if 
such recurrence had been attempted, it would not have been, for a moment, 
entertained in the House of which I was a member. From all that I knew 
then, and know now, of the purposes of the members of the Legislature 
and their opinions — and I think I was not, and am not, ill-informed— I 
have no doubt that if they had been permitted to hold the session which 
was prevented by the arrests of September, 1861, they would have ad- 
journed, in three days, for lack of business to occupy them. 

Not only have I given you the facts, truly, in regard to the supposed 
intention of the members of the Legislature to pass a secession ordinance 
themselves, and their actual determination to the contrary, but if you will 
take the trouble to examine the journals (Senate journal, 133, 134, and 
House journal, 108, 121,) you will further see that as early as May 14, 
1861, the House of Delegates, by a vote of forty-five to twelve, and the 
Senate unanimously, had adopted a resolution against the expediency of 
even calling a sovereign convention of the people of the State. The 
reasons assigned for that action, in the report which accompanied it, you 
will find to have been even more conclusive, when the Legislature was 
suppressed, than when the resolution was adopted. 

AU these facts are well known to be true by every member of the Legis- 
lature, no matter what may be his political sentiments. They were equally 
well known, at the time of our arrest, to every man in Maryland who had 
troubled himself to follow the course of our legislative proceedings. They 
were perfectly accessible to Mr. Lincoln at the time when, if Mr. Hickman 
truly represents him, " he thought it better to arrest the members of the 
Legislature and put them in jail," merely because he thought it "not 
unlikely" the facts were otherwise. If what I have stated is not true, its 
untruth can be shown. If, as Mr. Fessenden suggests, the President has 
" evidence" upon which his alleged belief to the contrary can be justified, 
such ' ' evidence " can be easily produced. / assert to you that there is no 
such evidence, and that there can he none, hecause the fact lohich it is sup- 
posed to establish did iwt exist. I am willing to stake my veracity and 
integrity upon the issue, and I challenge the public production of any proof 
to the contrary of what I have asserted. Doing so, I leave it to your 
candor and sense of right, to give to gentlemen whom you have been 
instrumental in injuring, an opportunity of being heard in their own vin- 
dication, through you, in the same public way in which the injury has 
been done. 

You wiU permit me to add, in frankness, that in what I have said I am 
not to be, for a moment, understood as conceding that Mr. Lincoln would 
have had the shadow of lawful right to break up the Legislature of Mary- 
land and imprison its members, at his pleasure, "without the forms of 
law," even if the charge which I have repelled, had been as well founded 
as it is the contrary. Upon that question, however, I have no right to 
take advantage of the present communication to obtrude my opinions upon 
you. Nor will you, I trust, suppose — for it is equally due to frankness 
that I should not allow you to suppose — that I have intended to apologize 
for or excuse any of the views which the Legislature of Maryland, in the 
exercise of its constitutional and rightful functions, saw fit to adopt and 



promulgate, at the session referred to, concerning the sectional struggle 
which has since assumed so fierce an aspect and such gigantic proportions. 
Those views may, of course, be erroneous — for legislatures are not more 
infallible than congresses or presidents — but they were entertained and 
proclaimed in good faith, upon mature consideration, concerning questions 
which deeply interested us and our people, and on which we had a right, 
and were bound, as individuals and legislators, under the free institutions 
of the country, to form and express our opinions without let or hindrance, 
or fear of president, commander-in-chief, or any other functionary or citizen. 

I have said that those opinions may be erroneous, but I believe them to 
be otherwise. I believe now, as I believed when they were adopted, that 
they were just and wise and patriotic, and I am proud that my humble 
name was connected with their assertion. I am none the less proud of it 
because the experience of the bloody and disastrous season which has 
intervened has confirmed their justice, or because there are tens of thou- 
sands now, throughout the country, who are beginning to concur in them, 
for one who was even disposed to deal fairly with them, at the excited 
moment when they were uttered. How far the expression of these views 
may have been the real cause of the arrests, for which the suspected inten- 
tion to pass an ordinance of secession is the cause publicly assigned, it 
would not be proper for me here to discuss — my only purpose having been 
to show that such intention is and has always been falsely ascribed to the 
Legislature of Maryland, and that if our arrest was really made upon that 
ground, it was as wanton as it was cruel and unlawful. 

Let the cause have been what it may, however, I have good reasons for 
believing that the seizure of the members of the Maryland Legislature was 
not made by Mr. Lincoln's direction or authority at all. I am justified in 
thinking you will find abundant "evidence," upon proper and sufficient 
investigation, that the whole high-handed proceeding was the work of Mr. 
Seward, of his own mere motion, without the previous knowledge or con- 
sent of the President, in any shape. That Mr. Lincoln was, afterwards, 
induced to ratify it, of course, makes his responsibility the same as if he 
had been its author ; but I am speaking only of the facts as I am confident 
you will find that they existed when the arrests were made. What were 
the purposes and motives of Mr. Seward, you can ascertain more readily 
than I. My only knowledge on the subject is derived from an official 
despatch of Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, bearing date November 4, 1861, 
and published in the Parliamentary Blue-Book. I found it in the New 
York Times, of March 1, 1862. His lordship reports in it the substance 
of an interview which he had had, a day or two before, with the Secretary 
of State. "Mr. Seward replied," he says, ". . that as to tJie recent 
arrests, they had almost all been made in vieio of the Maryland elections.^' 
I have no comment to make, here, upon such a disclosure. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

S. T. WALLIS. 



REPLY OF MR. SHERMAN. 



Washington, D. C, December 26, 1862. 
Hon. S. TeacMe Wallis: 

Sir : — Your letter of the 12th of December has been received. 

If I was convinced by it that it was not the purpose of the Maryland 
Legislature, of which you was a member, to avail itself of the first safe and 
practicable opportunity to join the Confederates in rebellion against the 
United States, I would cheerfully correct what I said in the Senate of you 
and your colleagues. As a student of the common law, I have been taught 
to regard the right of personal liberty as the most sacred privilege of a 
freeman, never to be affected except for crime, or in the case provided by 
the Constitution, when the public safety is jeoparded by rebellion or inva- 
sion. If your imprisonment was not, in my opinion, within this rule, I 
certainly would not justify your arrest. 

The language attributed to me in your quotation is not accurately re- 
ported. I said in the debate referred to : 

"So in the case of the Maryland Legislature, where the President 
believed that certain gentlemen were conspiring to overthrow the Govern- 
ment, not probably by open force, but by the exercise of their power as 
members of the Legislature, I believe the President would have been 
wanting in his duty to his country if he had not arrested these men, and 
detained them, at least until he defeated their disloyal and treasonable 
purposes." 

Your elaborate letter nowhere contains any denial of the ' ' treasonable 
and disloyal purposes " of the Legislature ; nor is there any denial that 
they were conspiring the overthrow of the Grovernment by the exercise of 
their power as members of the Legislature ; nor could I fail to be im- 
pressed with the entire absence of any avowal of loyal obedience to the 
Government on your part. Your letter confines the vindication of the 
Legislature to a citation of their proceedings to show that both Houses had, 
early in the session, voted their opinion that they had no power to pass an 
ordinance of secession, and that on the 14th of May they had voted it inex- 
pedient to call a sovereign convention. You add your asseveration to the 
truth of these facts, sufficiently proved by the record, and as I understood 
your letter, you pledge your personal veracity that there was no intention 
to pass such an ordinance. 

This defence, it is apparent, is merely a technical denial of one form of 
arraying the State of Maryland against the United States ; but it is simply 
the assertions of the accused party even on that point, which a few moments 
in altered circumstances, could reverse ; and, unfortunately, the evidence 
of their purpose, on the first favorable occasion, to defy the United States 



9 

and resist its authority, is in the possession of the public, and therefore, 
probably of the Government, corroborated by the avowed purposes of some 
of its members just on the eve of their election — your own among them. 

I cannot state the facts aflfecting individual cases, and shall fortify the 
opinion expressed by me in the Senate by events happening since the com- 
mencement of the rebellion, leaving to the proper authorities the task of 
designating individuals affected by them. 

On the 19th of April, 1861, when the blood of United States soldiers, 
shed in your streets without provocation, was still warm, a meeting was 
held in ]\Ionument square, under the auspices of the Mayor, in which your 
participation is thus described in your city papers : 

" S. Teackle Wallis, Esq., was called for, and responded in a short but 
forcible address. Like the Mayor he counselled the people to rely upon 
the authorities, who would stand by them. He had not come to the meet- 
ing for the purpose of making a speech, but had come with the Mayor at 
his request. It was not necessary to speak. If the blood of citizens on 
the stones in the street did not speak, it was useless for men to speak. 

" He assured the meeting that his heart was with the South, and he was 
ready to defend Baltimore. He hoped the blood of the citizens, shed by 
an invading foe, would obliterate all pax-ty differences, and seal the covenant 
of brotherhood among the people." 

With that speech before the people, not disavowed, which was an act 
of war — a formal participation in what had occurred and what immediately 
followed — you, on the 24th of April, with nine others, were elected to the 
Legislature. 

The Legislature met on the 26th, and on the 27th of April — the day on 
which the Senate disclaimed all constitutional power to pass an ordinance 
of secession — both Houses passed, by a suspension of the rules, the first 
law of the session, which is as follows : 

' ' The Mayor and City Council, may, and they are hereby authorized to 
raise and appropriate at their discretion, and in the modes and at the times 
which they may judge best, all moneys whatsoever, which they may deem 
necessary and proper for the defence and protection of said city, and to 
provide for the payment of the same by taxation or otherwise." 

On the same day, standing second in the published laws, and likewise 
passed by a suspension of the rules, is an act to confirm and ratify an ordi- 
nance of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore there recited, appropri- 
ating $500,000 for the purpose of putting the city in a complete state of 
defence against any description of danger arising, or which may arise out 
of the present crisis, the same to be expended under the direction of the 
Mayor of the city. 

That money was appi'opriated for levying war against the United States ; 
its avowed purpose was to resist the transit of troops over the usual and 
direct route to the Capital, and it was placed in the hands of those already 
engaged in that resistance. For, on the afternoon of the 19th of April, 
Mayor Brown, at the meeting in the Square, declared that "he was a 
citizen of Maryland, and would protect its soil with his life," against those 
whom you called the invading foe. 

He was, by law, a member, with Charles Howard, Wm, H. Gatchell, 
John W. Davis and Charles D. Hinks, of the Board of Police Commis- 
sioners, and before midnight on the 19th of April, the Mayor and Board 
of Police had ordered George P. Kane, the Marshal of Police, to destroy 
2 



10 

the railroad bridges conuecting the city with the Northern States, and 
before daybreak all railway communication was at an end. They had 
arrested the march of the troops of the United States by a warlike opera- 
tion of the most decisive kind, and jeopardized the safety of the Capital 
and the existence of the Government. 

On the same evening, before departing to execute this order, Mr. Kane, 
in reply to a despatch from Bradley T. Johnson, of Frederick, offering 
troops, sent the following despatch : 

" Thank you for your offer; bring your men in by the first train, and 
we will arrange with the railroad afterward. Send expresses over the 
mountains and valleys of Maryland and Virginia for the riflemen to come 
without delay. Fresh hordes will be down on us to-morrow, (20th.) We 
will fight them or die. Gteo. P. Kane." 

This was posted in Frederick, with a placard as follows, signed by 
Bradley T. Johnson : 

"All men who will go with me will report themselves as soon as possi- 
ble, providing themselves with such arms and accoutrements as they can. 
Double-barrelled shot-guns and buck shot are efficient." 

And Johnson with what men he could get, did go down and was taken 
into the service of the Mayor and Board of Police, on that invitation. 
They had, in addition, a trained and armed Police Corps of six hundred 
men. They retained under their orders the Light Division, partly com- 
posed of enemies of the Government, commanded by General Steuart, its 
avowed enemy, which the Governor had called out and placed under them, 
on the 19th, for loyal purposes. They began, on the 20th of April, the 
organization and arming of a volunteer force, limited only by their capacity 
to get men and arms, and placed it under the command of Isaac R. Trimble, 
and Colonel Hughes, both now in the rebel service. 

On the 20th of April, it was that the City Council appropriated half a 
million of dollars for the defence of the city against the dangers of the 
crisis — that is, against what you described the day before as " the invad- 
ing foe," what Kane the day before called " fresh hordes," what the law 
calls United States Troops, marching to the Capital of the nation : and it 
was that appropriation which the Legislature ratified, in their second act, 
only seven days afterward. 

No time was lost in using the money. The report of the expenditures 
is before me ; and the items will bear but one interpretation ; the chief of 
them are for arms and ammunition, ^24,174; for blankets and mattresses, 
$2,825 ; for marine and navy, (embracing hire and alterations of steamers 
and wages of men,) $5,461 ; for rations, $9,914; for pay of officers and 
men, $7,736; for horse and hack hire and hauling arms, $3,472; for 
rent of armories and repairs, $1,748. Such are some of the items for pro- 
visioning and equipping troops. 

The Mayor and Board of Police bought 1,700 carbines and rifles, 4,000 
pikes, 8,194 canister shot, 7,740 cannon balls, 4,956 pounds of lead, over 
24,000 ball cartridges, 150,000 caps, besides other ammunition and arms 
otherwise obtained. 

Thus armed, the Mayor and Board of Police Commissioners took mili- 
tary control of the city, the port and telegraph lines to Washington and 
Harper's Ferry, while they cut those to the North : the running of the trains 
to Washington was arrested, while those to Harper's Ferry were continued; 
vessels were not allowed to leave port with provisions, munitions of war, &c. 



11 

No vessel could sail unless by leave of the Board or of Isaac R. Trim- 
ble, commanding their volunteer force. This system was fully inaugurated 
on the 22d of April, and on that day, Trimble, in a note to Chas. Howard, 
discountenanced a military parade, because the "display of military will 
be a sorry one, and calculated to dishearten our citizens," and "if repre- 
sented abroad will rather invite and encourage attempts from the North to 
defy us and pass through the city," not to attack it. By an order in the 
minutes of the Board, on the same day, Trimble was authorized to allow 
the Eastern Shore steamers to pass, on condition of not stopping at Anna- 
polis, where General Butler then was ; and General Steuart, by letter of 
that date, writes to Charles Howard : 

"I know not what to think of the rumor from Annapolis; but if the 
Massachusetts troops are on the march from that place to Washington, I 
shall be in motion very early to-morrow morning to pay my respects to 
them." 

During the 22d and 23d of April, the telegrams and memoranda found 
in the office of the Board, show they were in communication with Kenton 
Hai-per, commanding sis thousand rebels at Harper's Ferry; and their 
agent " reported six thousand men ready to come down." 

The letters found further show that Gen, Steuart had applied to Gov. 
Letcher, of Virginia, Gen. Cocke, at Alexandria, and Harper, at Harper's 
Ferry, for arms, and had obtained the promise of 5,000 muskets. Letch- 
er's letter to Steuart shows he ordered 1,000 to be sent, and 2,000 did come 
to the possession of the Board of Police, and were claimed by Steuart ; and 
Howard wrote to James M. Mason to know if he should deliver them to 
Steuart, for the State of Maryland. 

Fourteen hundred of them are now in Fort McHenry ; the correspon- 
dence is in the hands of the Government officers. So open and complete 
was the state of war, that Hunter, commanding the United States receiv- 
ing ship in the harbor, wrote to the Board on the 23d of April, stating he 
had occasion to employ a steam tug in the service of the United States, and 
requesting them to authorize him to use one on that day in the harbor of 
Baltimore and the adjacent waters; and that request was respectfully 
declined by the Board. 

These acts of war were fully crowned by the order of the Police Com- 
missioners, forbidding the display of the National Flag, and the arrest of 
loyal men who refused to obey them. 

The attempt that has occasionally been made to explain those acts as 
precautions for the preservation of the internal peace of the State, or to 
repel lawless incursions of armed men from the North, is unworthy of fur- 
ther notice. I cannot see how a candid man can be misled by them. 

In this state of open war, the Police Commissioners went through the 
forms of an election, by which, on the 24th of April, you were returned 
to the Legislature to represent this rebellious action, by 9,000 votes out of 
30,000 — 21,000 having stayed at home, and no one having dared to 
oppose the armed rebellion, headed by the Police Commissioners ! 

In the flush of confident success, you and your colleagues met at Fred- 
erick on the 26th ; on the 27th you furnished the sinews of war to your 
confederates; and a Force Bill was reported to the Senate, and passed to 
a second reading by 14 to 8, by which the State militia was reorganized and 
placed under the power of the six Commissioners named in the bill, all 
avowedly enemies of the United States ; the Governor was stripped of all 



12 

power over it ; a large sum of money was appropriated to arm and equip 
it, and the bill, if passed, would have placed the State under an absolute 
military despotism of the enemies of the Grovernment, and left your loyal 
Governor at their mercy. 

But the small vote revealed the radical weakness of the rebellion in 
Baltimore ; on the 28th, the Police Commissioners began to apologize for 
their conduct, and put a softer color on it; the Force Bill caused great 
public indignation ; the Legislature was threatened by the loyal people of 
Frederick with expulsion if they dared to pass it, and on the 3d of May, 
Baltimore added her protest and menace of resistance ; and the leaders in 
the Legislature and their confederates out of it, began to think of safety 
while waiting events. 

The Force Bill was dropped ; on the 8th the Legislature passed a bill of 
indemnity, exempting from prosecution or punishment, the Mayor and Police 
Commissioners, and all persons who acted under their orders in their effort 
to maintain peace and good order, and prevent further strife on and after 
the occurrences on the 19th day of April, in consequence of such acts, 
and obedience to such orders, ' ' and repealing all laws in force in this 
State at the time of said acts, so far as regards said persons and their acts." 

In a word, the Legislature outlawed the United States and their soldiers ! 

On the 9th, the next day, the Committee on Federal Relations presented 
their report and resolutions ; which were adopted on the 14th ; but which 
you very inaccurately described as " a resolution against the expediency 
of even calling a sovereign Convention of the people of the State." 

The resolution was, that " under existing circumstances " it is inexpe- 
dient to call a Sovereign Convention of the State at this time. 

The report shows a sudden variation in opinion on the subject ; when 
you met on the 26th of April, Convention was the general wish ; in less 
than two weeks, on the 5th of May, the Committee tell us there was an 
almost unanimous feeling against calling a Convention at the present time. 

Two weeks more might, under favorable auspices, work another revolu- 
tion of opinion. 

" To the Committee," the report says, " the single fact of the military 
occupation of our soil by the Northern troops in the service of the Gov- 
ernment, against the wishes of our people, and the solemn protest of the 
State Executive, is a sufficient and conclusive reason for postponing the 
subject to a period when the Federal ban shall be no longer upon us." 

The Federal ban might be removed at any moment by military disasters, 
which you were doing your best to occasion ; and then the question of 
expediency would be solved in a different sense. For the resolution further 
declares the State of Maryland owes it to her own self-respect to announce 
her resolute determination to have no part or lot, directly or indirectly, in 
its prosecution. 

And the reasoning of the report adds to the significance of the resolu- 
tion, for it maintains that, if, as the Governor thinks, the Constitution is 
still over both State and General Government, "then the State of Mary- 
land can hold no neutrality when the Union is at war ! She takes sides 
against it the instant she fails to take sides with it. Neutrality in such a 
case is nullification, pure and simple, and an armed neutrality is merely 
rebellion and not union." Differing from the Governor, however, "the 
Committee have no hesitation in asserting and maintaining the right of the 
State, and its duty, to protest against the unconstitutional action of the 



13 

Administration, and refuse obedience to its unconstitutional demands," 
that action being its war on the rebellious States, those demands being for 
troops from Maryland. That is " nullification " and "rebellion" by the 
confession of the report formally declared by both Houses of the Legislature. 

Still, the report proceeds further to say: " The present and only possi- 
ble attitude of the State toward the Federal Government is an attitude 
of submission, unwilling and galling submission, on the part of those who 
think and feel" as the Committee manifestly do. 

It is frivolous to pretend that the Legislature had abandoned the pur- 
pose of calling a Sovereign Convention ; they merely wanted the removal 
of the Federal ban to clothe actual rebellion with the forms of popular 
sanction by calling a Convention to amend the Constitution. When they 
met on the 4th of June, they felt the " Federal ban " still on them, and 
adjourned from the 25th of June, to the 30th. 

When they again met, the ' ' Federal ban " was stiU on them ; but in 
the meantime their confederate, Kane, had been arrested by Greneral 
Banks ; the Police Commissioners had delivered the City of Baltimore to 
anarchy, and had been arrested — being men in arms, commanding armed 
men who had levied war on the United States. A joint Committee of both 
Houses, on the 5th of August, presented a report, which left nothing for a 
Sovereign Convention to do, and resolutions which pronounced the destruc- 
tion of the bonds of the State and Federal Governments ; for, with full 
knowledge of the conduct of the Police Board above detailed, which they 
had screened by a bill of indemnity, the Legislature of Maryland, on the 
7th of August, solemnly declared the arrest of Charles Howard, William H. 
Gatchell and John W. Davis, to have been made "under frivolous and 
arbitrary pretexts, a criminal violation of the plainest and dearest rights to 
which American citizens are born;" and pronounced their arrest "in 
their bearing on the authority and constitutional powers and privileges of 
the State, a revolutionary subversion of the Federal compact." 

They dared do no more, for the "Federal ban " was still on them ; but 
they adjourned on that day to the 14th of September, not without hope 
that the disaster of Bull Run might, ere that day, remove the " Federal 
ban," and allow them safely to end that " unwilling and galling submis- 
sion," in accordance with their frequently avowed purposes and their per- 
sistent efforts. 

Before that day you were arrested ! 

The only circumstance which could justify the President in permitting 
the assembling of such a body — which had already waged war against the 
United States, asserted the revolutionary subversion of the Constitution, 
and avowedly adjourned from time to time, to await the removal of the 
" Federal ban " that it might more formally array the State in arms against 
the Government — would have been its entire insignificance or the distin- 
guished loyalty the people of Maryland had exhibited in the elections and 
in raising troops. These were considerations of policy, and I am not 
inclined to question the President's judgment. 

But the arrest was rigidly legal and in the forms of law ; for Congress 
had authorized the President to use military power to suppress the rebel- 
lion, and he might lawfully seize any one engaged in it, or whom he might 
have reasonable cause to believe engaged in it. 

The joint Committee of the Legislature, of which you were one, declare 
that " the true and only loyalty of a free people consists in their rever- 



14 

ence for the laws and Constitution, and their obedience to the tribunals by 
which these are expounded." I cheerfully concur in that definition ; and 
those tribunals of the highest resort have declared the law as I have 
stated it. 

The Supreme Court, by the mouth of Chief Justice Taney, has decided 
that where the established Government has resorted to the rights and 
usages of war to maintain itself and to overcome unlawful opposition, "the 
officers engaged in its military service might lawfully arrest any one who, 
from the information before them, they had reasonable grounds to believe 
was engaged in the insurrection, and might order a house to be forcibly 
entered and searched, where there was reasonable grounds for supposing he 
might be concealed." 

And Chief Justice Marshall, in the same court, has said, if war be 
actually levied — that is, if a body of men be actually assembled, for trea- 
sonable purposes — all those who perform any part, however minute, or 
however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in 
the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors. 

The part the Legislature of Maryland performed in the war levied in 
Maryland, and Virginia and the South, was neither minute nor remote ; 
and they exposed themselves to something more than mere arrest. 

Of the indignities and indecencies inflicted on you, I know nothing; if 
they existed, they are to be greatly regretted ; but they hardly equalled 
those heaped by your confederates on the soldiers of the Union. 

I have confined myself to designating the acts of the Legislature and 
their confederates, which justify the President in treating them as public 
enemies. I am ignorant of the opinions which you protest against being 
considered to have changed ; nor are they material. No opinion is crimi- 
nal under our law ; even purposes unaccompanied by some attempt at exe- 
cution, however criminal, morally, are legally, innocent; but acts of war 
are the objects of military suppression, and such were the acts of the 
Legislature of Maryland. 

I regret to be obliged to admit that some arrests have been made by an 
abuse of military power ; you are not more sensitive to those wrongs than 
I am, and I have striven to prevent or redress them ; but, sir, you must 
pardon me for saying that your arrest is not one of that character. 

Respectfully, your ob't ser'vt, 

JOHN SHERMAN. 



REJOINDER OF MR. WALLIS. 



Baltimobb, Janvary Zd, 1863. 
Hon. John Sherman, United States Senate : 

Sir :- — I received on Sunday, December 28th, the letter bearing date 
the 26th, which you addressed to me, in professed reply to mine of the 
12th. I find it also in the New York Times of December 31st, with an 
editorial notice, from which I infer that it was forwarded to that journal, 
at least as soon as it was transmitted to me. My own letter would not 
have been handed to the World for publication, had not the lapse of a 
week, without even an acknowledgment of its receipt, given me reason 
to suppose that you intended to be discourteous as well as unjust. The 
tenor of your reply, as you have at last furnished it, does nothing to relieve 
me of that impression, it being obviously intended for a party pamphlet, 
ad captandum, instead of an answer, in good faith, on the subject upon 
which I addressed you. 

You have entirely misapprehended the purpose of my letter of the 12th, 
if you really suppose, as you profess to do, that I desired or attempted to 
convince you of my own " loyalty," or that of the Legislature of Mary- 
land, to which I had the honor to belong in 1861. I do not mean to be 
uncivil, when I assure you that nothing was farther from my thoughts, and 
that there are few things to which I could be possibly more indifterent, 
personally, than the judgment which gentlemen who bear your relation to 
the governing party in the United States may choose to form, in regard to 
myself, my opinions, or my action. Still less would I venture to deal so 
disrespectfully with the General Assembly of Maryland, as to recognize, 
in you or your partisan associates, any right or fitness to pass authoritative 
judgment upon them or their official conduct. 

As I understand the form of government under which the people of this 
country have, until within the last two years, supposed themselves to live, 
no citizen is criminally amenable, for his public or private conduct, except 
to the laws of the land as administered by the constituted judicial tribunals. 
"No opinion," you yourself admit, "is criminal under our law," and I 
think I may assume — whether you admit it, or not — that there are no acts, 
for which any citizen can be lawfully held to account, except those which 
the law has forbidden. No officer of the Government, whether civil or 
military, has any more right — as I have been taught — to create ofi"ences, 
or define them except only as the law prescribes, than he has to rob or 
murder on the highway, or proclaim himself king or sultan. It is of the 
essence of constitutional government — in peace or in war, as has always 
heretofore been understood — that the Constitution and laws should be mas- 



16 

ters, and public officers, like private individuals, only their servants. 
Beyond the lines of their strict constitutional powers, such officers are as 
literally without authority, before the law, as the humblest citizens ; for 
they are, in fact, private wrong doers, and not public officers, from the 
moment that they have transgressed those constitutional limits. 

Gentlemen of your way of thinking, however, have adjudged these rudi- 
mental and long established principles to be wholly obsolete, under the sort 
of government which you need, and have set up, to serve your purposes. 
You have accordingly borrowed from the vocabulary of despotism, the 
name of " disloyalty," to designate that undefined and undefinable offence 
— not known to free institutions, but which you have seen fit, in the pleni- 
tude of your prerogatives, to create — which consists in questioning the 
wisdom, canvassing the policy^ doubting the integrity, or, if need be, 
resisting the corruptions and usurpations, of those who temporarily hold 
and prostitute power. With like propriety and consistency you have 
adopted the catch-word of "loyalty," to indicate the equally undefinable 
public virtues and excellences which you would have it believed that your- 
selves and your partisans embody and monopolize. Knowing no "loyalty," 
myself, in my relation to the Federal Government, except that obedience 
which I owe, as a citizen, to the laws and Constitution, lawfully and con- 
stitutionally expounded and administered, I repeat that I am as free as a 
man can be, from the slightest desire that you or your fellow partisans, or 
any one else, should esteem me " loyal" after your fashion. Recognizing 
on the other hand, no " disloyalty" to the United States, except in disobe- 
dience to the Constitution which my State adopted and ratified, when she 
became a member of the Federal Government, or to the laws constitution- 
ally enacted under that instrument, I should probably feel myself honored, 
nine times out of ten, by your being pleased to consider me " disloyal." 
As to the more than Roman severity of the rebuke, which you assume the 
privilege of administering to me, in saying that you could not "fail to be 
impressed with the entire absence of any avowal of loyal obedience to the 
Government" on my part, in my letter to you — I must be excused if I 
cannot treat it with the gravity which you seem to have mustered to pro- 
nounce it. I have not yet learned that one American citizen is under any 
obligation to approach another — certainly, in no sense, more than his equal 
— with genuflexions or professions of faith or ' ' obedience " of any sort ; 
and I cannot but i-egard the professed expectation upon your part, to the 
contrary, as an amusingly presumptuous form of the hallucination, under 
which gentlemen of your political connection, at this time, seem to labor, 
when they set themselves up, above the law and its tribunals, as the judges 
and executioners of their fellow-citizens and equals. It is certainly, too, a 
new idea — among gentlemen, at all events — that a request to you, such as 
my letter contained, to correct a misstatement of fact, should be subject to 
demurrer, upon your part, because it was not ushered in with a sort of 
governmental sacrament. Your notion that the truth is not entitled to 
vindication, unless it first makes profession of "loyalty," is of kin to the 
other doctrine, so popular with you, that " rebels have no rights." 

But there is still another and a very satisfactory reason, peculiar to 
yourself, why I was especially careless about conciliating your good opinion 
in the matter referred to. I have before me a published letter of yours, in 
which you explain your refusal to vote, in 1861, for the resolution of Mr. 
Wilson, of Massachusetts, approving the suspension of the habeas corpus 



11 

by Mr. Lincoln. You distinctly state, iu that letter, as your reason for 
withholding your vote — not that you disapproved of the President's acts — 
for, on the contrary, you " cordially approved and justified them" — but 
that you could not say, with Mr. Wilson, that they " were strictly legal, 
or within his (the President's) delegated powers." " The legal j^ower to 
suspend the xorit of habeas corpus,^' you add, ' ' has been recently claimed for 
the President ; but I am convinced that, by the plain meaning of the Con- 
stitution, Congress alone must determine the cases in which the public safety 
requires its suspension." "Still," you go on to say, "there are times 
when our Executive officer must anticipate the action of Congress ; but, 
in such a case, he assumes the hazard of a ' bill of impeachment,' or a 
'bill of indemnity.' The President merely assumed this hazard, and, in 
the vacancy of Congress, wisely assumed, a power not delegated to him by 
the Constitution." 

When a Senator of the United States, bound by his official oath to sup- 
port the Constitution, can bring himself to declare that he cordially " ap- 
proves and justifies," in his official place, the action of the President in 
assuming " a power not delegated to him by the Constitution " — in other 
words, that he approves and justifies a sheer, admitted usurpation and vio- 
lation of the constitutional rights of the citizen, by the Chief Executive 
of the country — who, outside of the Constitution, is nothing, and who has 
solemnly sworn " to preserve, protect and defend" that Constitution, "to 
the best of his ability," and is bound, by its paramount provisions, to 
"take care that the laws be faithfully executed" — I must be allowed to 
entertain my own opinion as to the fitness of such a Senator, to understand 
or appreciate his own relation, or that of any other person, to a constitu- 
tional government. 

You will permit me to add, that when you addressed me the first para- 
graph of the letter before me, and after dwelling upon your yeneration, 
"as a student of the common law," for "the right of personal liberty," 
inform me that you regarded it "as never to be affected except for crime, 
or in the case provided by the Constitution, when the public safety is 
jeoparded by rebellion or invasion," but said that you thought the arrest 
and imprisonment of myself and my colleague "within this rule," you 
must have lost sight of the doctrine of the letter from which I have just 
quoted. It is difficult for a man, whose ideas are not stimulated by the 
atmosphere of " loyalty" in whicli you move, to understand how you can 
regard our arrest as "within this rule" of the Constitution, when you 
know that we were arrested by Executive mandate alone, without any pre- 
vious authority given by Congress to suspend "the right of personal 
liberty," and when you, yourself, have expressly declared that by "the 
plain meaning of the Constitution, Congress alone," and not the President, 
"must determine the cases in u-hich the public safety requires its suspen- 
sion." Surely you do not ask us to believe that when you used this lan- 
guage, in 1861,. and refused to join Mr. Wilson in saying that the suspen- 
sion of the habeas co?'pws by the Pi-esident was "strictly legal or within 
his delegated powers" — you meant to imply, or entertained, the opinion 
now suggested in your letter of December 26th, that Congress, by the 
mere act of authorizing the President ' ' to use military power to suppress 
the rebellion," ipso facto suspended the habeas corpus, and rendered 
' ' rigidly legal and in the forms of law " the arrest of any and every citizen , 
without oath or warrant, whenever and wherever the President in his dis- 
3 



18 

cretion might see fit. Yet, unless you do mean thus to tax the credulity 
of the public, I do not see what escape there is left to you, from a discrep- 
ancy which is not reputable in either a lawyer or a Senator. 

But I cease to be surprised at your thus relying upon the forgetfulness 
or ignorance of your readers, when I turn to the quotation from the opin- 
ion of the Supreme Court, as delivered by Chief Justice Taney in the case 
of Luther vs. Borden, (7 Howard, 45,) to which you carefully omit a par- 
ticular reference, but which you cite as authority for the monstrous propo- 
sition, that the President of the United States and the military ofl&cers 
under him, are clothed — by the mere pendency of a civil war recognized by 
Congress — with the authority to arrest citizens and search houses all over 
the country, without process of law, whenever in their judgment there 
may be reasonable ground for doing so. No one knows better than your- 
self, that in the opinion from which you made the quotation in question, 
the Chief Justice was speaking — as the Court was passing judgment — con- 
cerning a case in which the military right to make arrests and searches 
was recognized as arising, not from an implied Executive prerogative, 
growing out of the mere pendency of hostilities, but from a specific legis- 
lative act of the State of Rhode Island, by which martial law was expressly 
and specially declared, and from which alone the Govei-nor and his military 
subordinates derived all the authority which they pretended to exercise, 
or the Court pretended to ascribe to them in the premises. It would not 
at best have been very creditable to you, as a professional man, to insist — 
even if you had not concealed the material facts of the case — that the 
Supreme Court of the United States had in effect recognized the preroga- 
tive which you claim for the President, in the absence of express authority 
from Congress — merely because they had recognized it in the Governor of 
Rhode Island, under the express authority of the Legislature of the State. 
You could with difficulty, look a Court of Justice in the face and argue, 
upon such a foundation, that a declaration of war, or a recognition by 
Congress of a war or insurrection as existing, is ipso facto, a proclamation 
of martial law over the length and breadth of the republic. And yet 
such is your proposition, and you have kept back the facts which would 
have enabled your unprofessional readers to discover, as aU your profes- 
sional readers know, how reckless your statement is, that the Supreme 
Court of the United States have given it their sanction in the case from 
Rhode Island. You have as carefully kept back the other fact, equally 
well known to you, that in the memorable habeas corpus case of Merry- 
man, the Chief Justice of the United States, to whom you would ascribe 
the atrocious and despotic doctrine you are advocating, repudiated it with 
the most emphatic directness and solemnity — interposing, as he best could, 
between its operation and the liberty of the citizen, all the force of his 
great intellect, the fullness of his learning and wisdom, the purity and 
dignity of his character, and the authority — alas ! helpless — of his vener- 
able age and elevated office. Happily you cannot keep back the palpable 
and overwhelming fact, that popular opinion — seduced or frightened for a 
while from its propriety — has already trampled, in its reaction, upon the 
fallacies and fictions with which corrupt politicians and venal lawyers had 
sought to circumvent the intelligence of the people, while usurpation laid 
its hand upon their rights. Others are aware, if you yourself are forgetful 
of the fact, that as Senator from Ohio, you no longer represent the feelings 
or opinions of the people of your State, and that this result is chiefly due 



19 

to their indignant repudiation of the arbitrary and anti-republican doc- 
trines, of which you are still one of the lingering defenders. 

The startling character of the legal heresies which you have promul- 
gated^ and the extreme disingenuousness of the mode in which you have 
presented them, has led me, for public reasons, to enter much further into 
the discussion of them than I had wished, for I personally feel as little 
interest in your inconsistencies as I do in your opinions. My letter of the 
12th December was addressed to you concerning a matter of fact and not a 
matter of doctrine. You were reported in the newspapers as having used 
the language which I quoted in that letter, concerning the members of the 
Maryland Legislature, who were arrested and confined with me by the 
order of Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward. Taking your reported language in 
connection with the explicit statement made, last spring, by Mr. Hickman, 
in the House of Representatives, upon the alleged authority of the Presi- 
dent, and with the language used by Mr. Fessenden, in the Senate, a few 
days after your observations were made — -all of which T referred to in my 
letter — I understood, and had a right to regard the whole of you as making 
the charge, that the Legislature of Maryland, when its members were 
arrested, had specifically in contemplation the passage of an ordinance of 
secession. I understood Mr. Fessenden as further saying that the Presi- 
dent had ' ' evidence " of such intention . I took it for granted that you 
believed your statement to be true when you made it, and I addressed you, 
in perfect good faith, simply to let you know that it was not true, and ap- 
peal to your candor to correct it. I presumed that you would be glad to 
do so, but at all events I felt it due to myself and my colleagues and to 
the truth, not to leave uncontradicted a misstatement, to which your official 
position and the frequent reiteration of the same story in Congress, might 
give importance and credit, if it were not denied. If it had been a mere 
expression of your opinion concerning the merits or demerits of my col- 
leagues and myself, I should certainly have cared and said nothing about it. 

Under the circumstances^ your proper and natural course was a very 
plain one. If you had not asserted the fact which I supposed you to have 
asserted, you had but to say so, and there was an end of the matter. If 
you had asserted it and had the means of proving it to be true, you could 
have refused to alter your statement, and have produced your evidence or 
declined doing so, in your discretion. If you had asserted it and were 
unable to maintain it, you could have withdrawn the assertton, or have let 
it stand, according to your disposition or indisposition to be just. You 
have done none of these things. You deny that you made the statement 
of which I complain, and then reproach me for having merely replied to 
what you were reported as saying, instead of anticipating and answering 
what you were not reported as saying, in the newspapers which I read, and 
what, therefore, I had never seen. After wondering at this and shudder- 
ing at the absence of all "avowal of loyal obedience," in my letter, you 
proceed to argue that my whole communication was based upon a techni- 
cality. It was a " technical denial," you say — which you explain, to sig- 
nify that I took issue with you upon the isolated charge of our having 
intended to pass an ordinance of secession. Such an ordinance, you tell 
me, would have been "but one form of arraying the State of Maryland 
against the United States," and I have confined myself to a denial of our 
having contemplated that ' ' form " instead of defending the Legislature 
against the general and substantial charge of having intended, in some form 



20 

or other, " to defy the United States and resist its authority." I believe 
I state your point fairly and clearly. . Having made it, you dedicate the 
remainder of your letter to a promiscuous assault upon the Mayor and 
Police Commissioners of Baltimore, the proceedings of the Legislature 
generally, and ray individual course and declarations, with a large digres- 
sion upon the history of the excitement in Baltimore on and after the 19th 
of April, 1861. From all of these things you draw and assert the conclu- 
sion that we were all lawfully and justifiably arrested and imprisoned — 
whether we intended or did not intend to pass the ordinance of secession, 
which was the exclusive topic of my letter. 

Now, I do not know how all this may strike the mass of the partisans 
who read the Times; and for whom you wrote your letter, but it seems to 
me that the class for whom a Senator of the United States ought to write, 
will see, at a glance, that it is a mere evasion and a clap-trap. Who was 
it that raised and framed the issue as to the intention of the Legislature of 
Mai'yland to pass an ordinance of secession ? Not I, certainly, but Mr. 
Lincoln, and Mr. Hickman, and Mr. Fessenden, and yourself, as I saw 
your speech reported. You are the accusing parties. You had the " evi- 
dence " before you— or you ought to have had — when you attempted to 
justify the outrage which had been inflicted upon us. You framed your 
indictment, and, in order to escape the just reproach of making loose and 
random and indefinite accusations, and of having deprived men of their 
liberty without specific and ascertained cause therefor, you selected, among 
you, and agreed upon the charge that we had intended to throw our State 
out of the Union htj adopting a secession ordinance. You put that fact 
forward, of your own choice, as the burden of our guilt and the corner- 
stone of your justification. The President of the United States, speaking 
through Mr. Hickman, not only made the accusation in words, but with 
his usual graceful playfulness^ when men's dearest rights are in question, 
had his joke about " the pockets" in which the " resolutions of secession " 
were to have been carried to Frederick. The G-overnment newspapers, in 
Baltimore and elsewhere, teemed, at the time of our arrest and afterwards, 
with stories about the mysterious "ordinance." The ruffians who were 
sent by the Secretary of State to our dwellings, at midnight, to seize upon 
our correspondence and rifle our desks and safes, spoke, openly, in the 
presence of the inmates of our houses, concerning the existence of such an 
ordinance in the possession of some of us, and of their instructions to 
search for it. In my own case, they were for six or seven hours in pursuit 
of it, with all the ingenuity and the appliances of more respectable burglars. 
Produce, or get the President to produce all the official ptapers connected 
with our arrest, and I will almost be willing to stake my whole case on the 
fact, that they will he found to specify our intention to pass such an ordi- 
nance, as the precise offence creating the necessity for the suppression of the 
Legislature. In more than one of the public journals, it was mentioned — 
and repeated long afterwards at the North, when I was in Fort ^Varren — 
that an " ordinance," supposed to be in my handwriting, had actually been 
delivered to the Secretary of State, whose delight at the possession of such 
a treasure was, one day, rudely put an end to, by the discovery that it was 
a forgery — the work, as was stated, of some " loyal" clerk in his own 
office, whom I had once prosecuted for a former crime. I do not know 
that the story was false, for it was not officially promulgated — nor do I 
know that it was true. I refer to it, and to the other circumstances which 



21 

I have mentioned, in order to show that when the intended passage of an 
ordinance of secession was set up as our offence, and as the justification for 
our an-est, the design of the Government was specifically to fix upon us 
that specific "treasonable purpose." I had no reason or right to believe 
that, instead of meaning what they said, and what they charged, the Presi- 
dent and his defenders meant something else, and not what they said and 
charged. I had no right or reason to suppose that a general, indefinite, 
treasonable mind and purpose, not concentrated in any particular act, was 
all that was meant to be ascribed to us, and that when I denied the specific 
and oft-repeated accusation, upon which all of you agreed, I should be told- 
that it was a "technical denial," and that I ought to have entered upon a 
defence of the Police authorities of Baltimore, the difficulties on and after 
the 19th of April, and the proceedings, at large, of the Legislature. If I 
had done so, would you not have been the first to say that I had guiltily 
evaded the real and vital question ? If I, or some other person interested, 
had not denied that we intended to pass the ordinance in controversy, 
would you not have assumed and have claimed the right to assume, that 
such an intention was justly ascribed to us ? And if, after gentlemen of 
high position, like the President and members of Congress, have them- 
selves deliberately selected and framed and tendered an issue of fact, they 
call the denial of the fact in issue a technicality, as you do, what reason 
have I to assume that they will not again do the same thing ? What 
grounds have I for believing that you mean to stand by the fresh state- 
ments, in your letter, of what you call facts, any more than by the other 
alleged fact of the ordinance of secession, by which you now refuse to stand? 
Would I have any security, after showing the untruth and futility of 
them all, that you would not say I had written a series of "technical 
denials" of isolated facts, and that the broad fact of my general " disloy- 
alty," or that of some of my friends and acquaintances, was all that you 
had intended to charge ? 

There is no arguing, permit me to say, with gentlemen who adopt that 
style of reasoning. You furnish more than one striking illustration of its 
vices in the very case before us. You will have it, for instance, that it 
made no difference to the President, and makes none in the argument, 
whether the Legislature of Maryland was about to pass an ordinance itself, 
or to call a Convention which might do the same thing. The one inten- 
tion, if you are to be credited, would have been as good a justification as 
the other, for the ai-rest of the Legislature. You can hardly mean this, 
although you say it. Any ordinary person who did not desire to arrest for 
the mere sake of arresting, would suppose, that when the purpose of the 
President was to prevent, by summary arrests, the passage of an ordinance 
of secession, he would arrest only those who intended to pass it, and that 
instead of arresting the Legislature for intending to call a Convention, he 
would not even arrest the members of the Convention itself, until he had 
reasonable certainty that they intended to do the act which he feared. 
Certainly it ill becomes you to assert that the intention of calling a Con- 
vention would have been a " treasonable and disloyal purpose," when the 
" entire insignificance " which yoijr courtesy ascribes to the Legislature, 
and the "'distinguished loyalty" with which it clothes the people of Mary- 
land, must render it quite certain, in your judgment, that a Convention, if 
called, would have triumphantly overturned the Legislature and secession 
together. But the point is not worth pm-suing farther. Your reply, I 



22 

repeat, is an evasion and not a maintenance of your position. My denial 
was not a " technical denial," but a denial as substantial as the deliberate 
and intentional charge which it repelled. 

It is no part of my puapose to follow you through the long array of 
allegations and insinuations, outside of the only question between us, by 
which you endeavor to bolster up the justice of the proceedings which for 
so long deprived the Mayor and Police Commissioners of Baltimore and 
the members of the State Legislature of their liberty. I have no means 
whatever of access to the documents which you profess to cite, or to the 
correspondence which you say "is in the hands of the Government offi- 
cers," and upon which you found your principal impeachment of the 
fidelity of the police authorities. I cannot tell to what extent they exist, 
or what is their authenticity. But having, as a member of the Legisla- 
ture, examined and fully approved the course of the Police Board, I know 
enough of the facts to justify me in declaring that the statements in regard 
to them, of which you have allowed your letter to be the vehicle to the 
public, are partial, garbled and unjust, and frequently untrue. I willingly 
persuade myself that you have been deceived into promulgating them, for 
I fancy that I can see in them the Avork of hands which are not yours, but 
which private disappointments and malice, and local interests and hatred, 
have made the perpetual bearers of falsehood and malignant counsels to the 
Executive chamber, during the whole long agony of this wretched war. 
If you had reflected, for an instant, it seems to me that you would not 
have permitted yourself to enter upon a crusade, under such guidance. 

It is now nearly eighteen months since the Baltimore Commissioners of 
Police, then prisoners illegally confined at Fort IMcHenry, presented their 
respectful memorial to the two Houses of Congress. They protested their 
innocence of any ofience against the laws of the country ; insisted upon 
their right to be informed of the accusations against them ; invited scru- 
tiny into their whole conduct, private and official, and asserted "^ their 
readiness to meet, without a moment's delay, any charge which might be 
responsibly laid against their individual or official proceedings." Suggest- 
ing their inability to obtain redress, pending the suspension of the habeas 
corpus in Maryland, they ' ' respectfully and earnestly invoked the imme- 
diate interposition of Congress in their behalf." That memorial was 
treated with open Indignity and contempt. From the moment of its pre- 
sentation, down to this hour, neither the Senate, of which you are a 
member, nor the lower House, has given any heed to their complaints, or 
taken one step towards the vindication of their rights or of public liberty 
or justice in their behalf. You have not given them the accusations 
against them (if any) or the names of their accusers. You haA'i not 
afibrded them an opportunity of even proving their innocence, mucli less 
have you allowed them a public hearing or trial, before either a Congres- 
sional committee or the constituted judicial tribunals. Grand jury after 
grand jury, selected by a Marshal of Mr. Lincoln's appointment, (to say 
nothing of grand juries of the State,) has met, since they were taken from 
their homes in July, 1861. At least one Federal grand jury has deliber- 
ately investigated the whole proceedings which you have discussed in your 
letter, with all the evidence in the possession of the Government before it 
— including, of course, everything to which you have had access, in order 
to prepare the defence of the Government which you have published. Yet 
no bill of indictment has been founds or could be procured to be found. 



23 

The House of Representatives;, certainly — and perhaps the Senate also — 
called upon the President to state the grounds upon which the gentlemen 
in question were arrested and imprisoned, but the President refused the 
information, as "incompatible with the public interests." You were all 
satisfied with that refusal, and there you and those who think and side with 
you — representatives of a people calling itself free, and boasting yourselves 
the special apostles of freedom — allowed the case of your oppressed and 
helpless fellow-citizens to rest, unheard, unconsidered — scorned. There 
was not a man of you, who could rise above the level of political and sec- 
tional vindictiveness to an act of simple, common justice, much less to vin- 
dicate a great principle, or to strike an honest blow for public and private 
freedom. You allow the victims to languish, for nearly a year and a 
half, in prison after prison, to which they were dragged — you emancipa- 
ting negroes, the while, by the thousand, as the President now is, by the 
million. And now that the prisons have been opened, and the prisoners 
in question released without condition — not willingly, but because public 
opinion had demanded it, at the ballot box, and the gathering storm of 
public retribution was too portentous to be longer disregarded — you a 
Senator, who have aided in doing all this injury, are not ashamed gratuit- 
ously to attack, at an unfair advantage, through the columns of a newspa- 
per, the men whom you have so long refused to charge, or hear, or try, 
publicly, fairly, openly, and where they could meet their accusers face to 
face, according to their rights and your obligations. You consent to gather 
up, fi-om "the hands of Government officers" and local informers, for 
publication against them, ex parte statements and apocryphal scraps, to 
the sources and originals of which they have no access for challenge or 
disproof, and under pretext of replying to a letter from me, upon a differ- 
ent subject, which you evade, you thus seek to cover the retreat and the 
shame of the Government and your own dereliction of duty. Do you 
think this is worthy of you, as a gentleman or a Senator ? Do you think 
it honorable — nay even decent — in the Executive, or his subordinates, ir- 
responsibly to furnish to you, in such a way and for such purposes, what 
Mr. Lincoln alleged that it would be " incompatible with the public in- 
terests " to disclose to you, as a member of the Senate, to be used legiti- 
mately and responsibly, for public ends, in your official place and sphere ? 
If the incompatibility, which he pretended, has now ceased to exist, why 
does he not respond to the requisition of Congress, as becomes him, in- 
stead of privately retailing his ' ' evidence " to you for the pages of a party 
journal ? If the President and his Secretaries of State and War, are 
really able to establish the case against the Police authorities, which you 
have set up for them, why have they not done so? Why has no grand 
jury been able to find an indictment against the alleged criminals? If 
there are letters, and minutes, and telegrams of the parties in question, 
Avhich would condemn them, as you pretend, and of which the President 
and his Secretaries have control, why are they not produced, openly and 
upon official responsibility, before some tribunal honest and fearless enough 
to drag out the whole truth and bring the accused — or the accusers — to 
shame and justice ? You know very well that the Mayor of Baltimore, 
and Messrs. Howard and Gatchell, two of the Police Commissioners, dur- 
ing the whole of their long imprisonment, defied and denounced the arbi- 
trary power and conduct of the government, demanding their release as a 
right, and refusing to purchase it by the shadow of a concession. You 



24 

know that they were at last discharged, without yielding the ninth part of 
a hair. Do you think that Mr. Seward and ]Mr. Stanton are magnanimous 
and benevolent persons, likely to give way to such contumacy, whore they 
have only to produce against the recusants, from the fdes of tlicir detective 
office, conclusive evidence of treason? Is there one Avord you have said in 
your long letter, to demonstrate the justice of the arrest of those gentle- 
men, which, if true, would not make it as rigidly the sworn and bounden 
duty of Mr. Lincoln, upon his theory and yours, to retain them in custody 
still, for trial and punishment ? 

State the thing as you may, sir, it is not a thing for either you or the 
Executive to be proud of. Your mode of dealing with the guilt or inno- 
cence of men and their liberty, is at variance with the institutions, the 
habits, the very instincts of a free people, whose love of justice and fair 
play, and, let me add, of truth — has not yet been entirely debauched away 
by their representatives and rulers. I will not do the injured men in ques- 
tion the wrong, nor public sentiment the outrage, nor myself the discredit, 
of submitting their case to your arbitrament, or to trial upon your news- 
paper impeachment. I assert, now, as a matter within my own knowledge, 
that when, as one of the counsel of the Police Commissioners, I visited 
General Banks with my colleagues, on the very day when the arrest was 
made. General Banks, who had made it, assured us, explicitly, that there 
was no charge against our clients, impeaching their integrity in any way, 
and that they had been arrested chiefly by way of precaution. I state, 
further, from my personal knowledge also, that on the 20th of April, 1861, 
when I accompanied the Mayor of this city to Washington, where he had 
been invited by Mr. Lincoln for consultation, the President himself, in 
the *presence of his whole Cabinet and of Lieut. Gen. Scott, as well as of 
my companions and myself, more than once volunteered to declare, that he 
had carefully investigated the conduct of the Police authorities of Balti- 
more on the 19th of April, and was entirely satisfied that they had dis- 
charged their duty in good faith, and to the best of their ability. No 
member of the Cabinet ventured to gainsay the judgment of the Presi- 
dent, although the Mayor, with perfect frankness, informed them that in 
conjunction with Gov. Hicks, the Police Board, of which he was a mem- 
ber, had ordered the destruction of the bridges — that "warlike operations," 
which you denounce as treason in the concrete. As the name of ex-Gov- 
ernor Hicks has been recently added to the list of patriots and statemeu 
who adorn the Senate, on the " loyal" side, his certificate upon the ques- 
tion may perhaps weigh somewhat in your judgment. If you will turn to 
his late Excellency's message to the Legislature of IMaryland, on the 25th 
of April, 1861, you will find him declaring that " the Mayor and Police 
Board gave to the Massachusetts soldiers (on the 19th) all the protection 
they could afford, acting with the utmost promptness and bravery." I 
trust that after reading it, you may modify to some extent the lawyer-like 
proposition of your letter, that it was an overt act of treason for the Legis- 
lature of Maryland to pass the act for the protection of the Police authori- 
ties, which you declare to have "outlawed the United States and their 
soldiers." That statute did not pretend to impair private rights or reme- 
dies, as the indemnity law recently passed by the House of Representa- 
tives, in Mr. Lincoln's behalf, so unblushingly and absurdly does. Surely 
you do not mean to intimate it, as your opinion, that Mr. Lincoln's indem- 
nity act "outlaws" not only the thousands who have been his victims, 



25 

but the whole of the citizens of the States over whom he has brandished 
the sword of martial law. If you do, I trust that the country will hear 
from you in the Senate, and not through the Times. 

But I have dwelt too long on this branch of the subject. I undertake 
to promise you, in leaving it, that whenever the President of the United 
States, on his own responsibility, will give to the late Police authorities of 
Baltimore an opportunity of confronting their accusers, and of being heard 
and judged as free men may submit to be, without surrendering their rights 
and self-respect, they will vindicate their conduct from every just reproach , 
to the satisfaction of all whose good opinion is worth having. If you 
doubt what I say, you have only to have the experiment made. I think 
I may add that the gentlemen named will manage to find for themselves a 
way of bringing the matter before some legitimate tribunal, where some, 
at least, of those who have been engaged in " outlawing" them, will have 
an opportunity of ascertaining how far the justification you have set up is 
well-founded, in fact or law. 

I pass, now, to your assault upon the Maryland Legislature, concerning 
which, and its proceedings as challenged and grossly distorted and misrep- 
resented by you, I propose to enter into but little discussion. It is due, 
however, to my colleagues from Baltimore and to myself, that I should 
deny, in the most unqualified manner, the truth of the statement which you 
make, that our election was but a " form," and that we were chosen only 
because " no one dared to oppose the armed rebellion, headed by the Police 
Commissionex's." Among all the wholesale fictions with which you have 
been furnished^ by your collaborators here, there is not one more profligate 
than this. I assert, what no man of veracity will deny here — under his 
own signature, and alleging fact in vei-ification of his denial — that from the 
time of the inauguration of the Board of Police of Baltimore in the spring 
of 1860, down to the hour of its suppression by militai-y force, in the sum- 
mer of 1861, the freedom of the ballot-box and of access to it was as 
sacredly and perfectly guarded and maintained, for all citizens, of all par- 
ties and opinions, as ever, under any system, was or could be possible. I 
challenge the production of any charge to the contrary, from the worst 
partisan or the most corrupt press among us, until after the suppression of 
the Board had rendered slander necessary to vindicate usurpation. I 
assert, and am ready to prove, whenever a single fact to the contrary is 
alleged, that the preparations for securing a free and fair election, on the 
24th of April, 1861, were as ample and in as good faith as ever before, and 
that no man in the whole community — not even the most rabid and obnox- 
ious and unworthy partisan — would have met with the slightest obstacle, 
in voting for any candidates whom he might have preferred. Indeed I 
challenge proof to the contrary, when I further assert, that, during the 
whole of the excitement which occupied and followed the 19th of April, 
the Board of Police extended to every citizen of Baltimore the most ample 
and efficient protection in person and property, and that security in both 
were actually had, by all, amid the heats of the strife which occurred and 
was impending, to an extent which puts to shame the contemporaneous 
condition of the large cities of the North. You may doubt or disbelieve 
this, honestly, I admit. But it is true nevertheless. You have no right 
to doubt it, because it was officially stated to you by the Mayor and City 
Council, in their memorial to Congress, in 1861, and by the Board of 
Police in theirs, and an investigation of its truth was respectfully and 
4 



26 

earnestly besought at your hands, which you refused. But I do not won- 
der at your doubting it, amid the crowd and press of falsehoods with which 
your partisans, here and elsewhere, have overwhelmed the history of those 
times, during the imprisonment and absence, and the enforced silence, of 
those whom you have all joined in endeavoring to crush for their opinions. 
That many persons, apprehending further military collision, left the city 
with their families, for the time, is undoubtedly true. That others, who 
probably are your special informants, ran incontinently away, in sheer fright, 
when there was not the slightest danger to them or theirs, is equally true, 
and it is quite natural that these last should magnify the dangers before 
which their own heroism quailed. But that any man, of any party, who 
asked protection from the Police, had any difficulty in obtaining it, or that 
any citizen of Baltimore had any real reason for seeking personal safety in 
flight, -is wholly untrue. Least of all, as I have said, is there any ground 
for intimating a question as to the perfect freedom of the ballot-box on the 
24th of April. The vote was small, because there was but one ticket in 
the field ; yet, although I was a member of the delegation elected, I will 
not allow false delicacy to prevent me from saying, that I believe it was 
personally unexceptionable to the great mass of the people. It was com- 
posed of men of business, who were not professional politicians, and who 
generally were known to be men of character, intelligence, and moderation 
in their views. To many of them, the acceptance of such a place was well 
known to be a sacrifice. To myself it was a serious one, which only a 
sense of duty as a citizen prevented me from refusing to encounter. Of 
the delegation, the majority had been prominent members of the old Whig 
party — some of them, at one time, active members of the American party. 
I believe that we should have been fairly and easily elected, by an over- 
whelming majority, over any opposition that might have been presented ; 
and I know that if there had been any opposition, it would have found the 
ballot-box as free as we found it, and would have been fairly dealt with by 
the Police authorities and ourselves. If you really believe that we never 
represented more than nine thousand voters out of thirty thousand in the 
city; that the rest of the State was of "distinguished loyalty;" that our 
support grew smaller and smaller, from day to day, afterwards, and that 
we were actually frightened from our intention of adopting measures of 
treason, by the "threat of expulsion " on the part of the " loyal people " 
of the town of Frederick — to say nothing of the " menace of resistance" 
from Baltimore — I should be pleased to know in what consisted the danger 
which Mr. Lincoln, or any one else, had a right to apprehend from us. 
What pretext or excuse had he for arresting us, when in addition to this 
local security and our ' ' entire insignificance/' he had armed possession 
of the whole State, and had the Governor to aid him in disarming its 
inhabitants ? 

You entirely misapprehend — you certainly misrepresent — the state of 
things in Baltimore on and immediately after the 19th of April, 1861. It 
was a reign of comparative unanimity in feeling and opinion — not a reign 
of terror. The facts have been concealed from you, or distorted, or falsi- 
fied, 10 answer the purposes of your informants. When I made the speech 
to the people, on the 19th, of which you have quoted an absurd and false 
report, I was conducted — nay, almost forced to the stand, by one of the 
most prominently " loyal" gentlemen of Baltimore — immaculately "loyal" 
now as then — who not only applauded what I said, to the echo, but con- 



21 

gratulated me upon having said it, when I had finished. It was but a few 
days afterwards, that he invited me to join a company he was organizing, 
to support the authorities ! My poor remarks, on the occasion referred to, 
were received with tremendous cheering, by crowds of citizens — " Union 
men" then and theretofore — many of whom are so desperately "loyal" even 
now, that you may count on their support to the Administration and the 
war, to the overthrow of every vestige of the Constitution, except the 
clause which secures "the obligation of contracts." I have had recent 
access to an autograph subscription-list containing the signatures of many 
leading mercantile houses, of the most unconditional and uncompromising 
"loyalty," and now in the very bosom of the true faith, with yourself — 
wherein they attested the sincerity of their respect for the motives and pur- 
poses of the authorities, on the 19th of April, by subscribing amounts, set 
opposite to their names, for the purpose of purchasing arms, to be used 
under the direction of the Board of Police. I dare say the list will be given 
to the public, before long. It was probably with these arms — for there 
were scarcely any others — that the Baltimore American, since and now the 
organ of the Government here, and certainly the very glass and mould of 
"loyalty" among us^ suggested on the 20th of April, that the Northern 
troops should be met "beyond the limits of the city " — a suggestion, how- 
ever, which the Police authorities did not see fit to adopt. It was only the 
day before, that the same patriotic journal, in its afternoon issue, had said— 
in words similar to those which you asci-ibe to me on that point — and 
which, with some unimportant modification of language, I did certainly 
use — that " the blood of our citizens, shed in our streets, is an irresistible 
appeal to us all to unite as Marylanders." The appropriation of half a 
million by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, which you denounce 
the Legislature for having ratified, was, at once and spontaneously, made 
effective by a voluntary tender of the whole amount, as a loan, on the part 
of the banks, on the very day of the adoption of the city ordinance. I 
was present at the Mayor's office on that day, when a committee of bank 
officers, as "loyal" as yourself or General Butler, made tender of the 
money to his Honor, and I well remember the jubilant satisfaction which 
the chairman expressed at having been authorized to do so. Nothing, I 
am sure, would be more difficult than for you to convince all the worthy 
gentlemen to whom I have alluded, that they did what would have justi- 
fied the President in sending them to Fort Warren, instead of taking 
counsel with them and theirs, as he has done, to suppress the "disloyal 
element." You, doubtless, remember the fine specimen of elegiac com- 
position which issued from Fort McHenry, when the proprietor of the 
American was torn from his ' ' sorrowing wife and daughters " and shut up 
" in a depot of traitors" for a day or two, because of his precipitate 
attempt to sell an account of the "grand strategic movement" to Har- 
rison's Landing ! 

I could give you a host of other examples, to illustrate the public una- 
nimity which I have described as existing. They will not be hidden much 
longer untler a bushel, I imagine — but I presume you will be satisfied with 
a single additional one. Indeed, I do not see how, in examining the report 
of the proceedings in Monument Square, on the 19th April, you could 
have been withdrawn, by the observations ascribed to so humble an 
individual as myself, from the speech of your present colleague, then his 
Excellency, Governor Hicks, upon the same occasion. If you had taken 



28 

the trouble, you would have learned how that "loyal" citizen and officer 
then and there declared that ' ' he had had three conferences with the Mayor, 
and they had agreed upon every point presented" — and further, that "he 
was a Blarylander and would sooner have his right arm cut off than raise 
it against a sister Southern State ! " I am sure you must have seen, from 
your obvious familiarity with the proceedings of the Legislature, how in 
his opening message, a few days after, the Governor showed, by his cor- 
respondence, that he had remonstrated against the sending of any more 
troops through Maryland, and had protested to General Butler against the 
landing, at Annapolis, of the division commanded by that person. If this, 
and what I have said before, be not sufficient to satisfy you that everybody 
ought not to be hanged, who was naturally and painfully excited by the 
shedding of the blood of our people in our streets, and by the barbarous 
threats of Northern presses and mobs, and who desired to avert the shed- 
ding of more blood — let it at all events furnish you with a test of Mr. Lincoln's 
impartiality in the use of his supreme prerogatives. Consider Governor 
Hicks, I pray you, as a Senator of the United States, with his right arm 
as yet unamputated, and Mr. Brown and myself — who vowed no limbs to 
the surgeon — as prisoners just released from Fort Warren after fourteen 
months of ruthless captivity. 

Your charge that the members of the Legislature were only deterred by 
fear or menace of popular violence from adopting such measures as they 
deemed expedient, is as untrue as the charge already refuted, that the elec- 
tion of the Baltimore delegation was the result of illegal pressure upon 
the voters. I am quite sure that no definite threats of popular outrage 
ever reached the Legislature to my knowledge; and certainly no one. 
attached any importance to them, if they were made. There was some 
foolish talk, among a few excitable people at Frederick, which I have no 
doubt there were knaves enough to encourage ; but I know that it was only 
laughed at, and the parties who were guilty of it knew better than to carry 
it beyond the swagger of the bar-rooms. The "Force Bill," as you call 
it, was not passed, simply because it was both inexpedient and at variance 
with the Constitution of the State, in the judgment of the large majority 
of the members of the Legislature, who were opposed to it. If we had 
deemed it otherwise, we should not have hesitated or feared to pass it ; but 
although it went to a second reading in the Senate, the opposition to it on 
the part of the members of the House became so decided, as soon as its 
provisions were generally canvassed, that it was recommitted in the Sen- 
ate, and died in committee. I never knew of the existence of the bill, or 
of the purpose to introduce it, until after it was printed and had passed to 
the second reading ; and I do not believe that more than one or two mem- 
bers, at farthest, of the Baltimore delegation, were better informed. I know 
that we were unanimously opposed to it, as soon as we knew what it was. 

So much for the measures which we did not pass, and which you seem 
to consider as justifying our arrest, quite as decidedly as those which we 
adopted. For these last I have no apology or explanation to make, to you 
or to any one. I have reviewed them, carefully and calmly, and am ready 
to stand by them all. Of the position which they gave to the State, 
upon the great questions which have severed the Union, I am proud, as in 
my last letter I said to you. The sad experiences of the intermediate 
time have given them a sanction and a confirmation, which no candid or 
rational man can dispute. Those measures constitute the whole of what, 



29 

as a Legislature, we did, or thought it proper and practicable, and within 
our legitimate sphere, to do; and the frank and explicit manner in which 
our conclusions in regard to the war, its causes, conduct and consequences, 
were promulgated and officially communicated to the Government — even 
after the armed forces of the United States had full possession of the 
State, and the President had disregarded the habeas corpus, and had 
arrested and imprisoned the Police authorities of its chief city — would 
have satisfied a fairer man than yourself that it was a libel to charge us 
with "conspiring," or with being intimidated from the execution of pur- 
poses which we entertained. With these measures and the recorded 
opinions of the Legislature before the world, I could not falsify, if I 
would, the position which we occupied. Nor can you. We believed the 
war to be unjust and unconstitutional — brought about by the aggressions 
of the Northern people upon the rights of the South, and portending a 
military despotism to both sections. We believed the restoration of the 
Union, by force of arms, to be a cruel absurdity and impossibility, and we 
desired and implored the Grovernment of the United States to give us 
peace, upon the only terms on which we believed it to be possible — the 
recognition of Southern independence. In a quarrel in which we believed 
the South to have the right on its side, our sympathies were, of course, 
with the South, and they were strengthened by habits, ties, associations, 
and common institutions and interests. We were satisfied that the troops 
which wei-e passing through the State to Washington — and which Mr. 
Lincoln, in my hearing and that of his Cabinet, on the 21st of April, 
1861, solemnly declared to be intended only for "the defence of the 
, Capital," and not for invasion — were meant to subjugate the Southern 
States. We believed that they were destined, sooner or later, to be the 
bearers of an Emancipation Proclamation, and to stir up servile insurrec- 
tion. We regarded them, therefore, as Governor Hicks had styled them, 
in his letter to General Butler, as "Northern troops" — on an unlawful, 
sectional and unconstitutional errand, to which the pretence of " restoring 
the Union" gave no sanction in our eyes. We believe the people of the 
State of Maryland, in the event of the dissolution of the Union, to have 
the right of determining to which of the two sections their feelings and 
interests inclined them, and we had no doubt that, upon that naked ques- 
tion, three-fourths of them, at least, would seek to join their destinies with 
those of the South. These opinions we had the unquestioned right to en- 
tertain and to express, and we did so. You will find them all openly pro- 
claimed in the reports and resolutions which the Legislature adopted. 
They are my deliberate opinions, still, and I know of no change, in regard 
to them, among my colleagues. But though they were our opinions, we 
knew and felt that we were not the people of Maryland, and that we had 
no right, as a mere legislative body, to pass an ordinance of secession, or 
to revolutionize the State, or to alter its government, or to plunge it into 
war, of our own motion. These things were for the people themselves 
to determine on, and to do or to leave undone; and I solemnly asseverate 
that it never entered into the plans or purposes or contemplation of the 
Legislature, to substitute itself for the people, in these regards, or to 
" conspire" to do so. We should undoubtedly have placed our people in 
a condition to defend themselves and the State against lawless aggression 
from the General Government, if we had been able to do it. This was 
our duty, and it was the constitutional right of the people, and subsequent 



30 

suflfierings and wrongs Lave demonstrated its paramount necessity. If we 
could, we should, beyond all peradventure, have prevented the suppression 
of the municipal government of Baltimore and the General Assembly of 
the State, and the substitution of a military commandant, and his will, for 
the laws and Constitution of Maryland. We should never have permitted 
the illegal arrests, the searches and seizures without oath or warrant, 
which have trodden out the fundamental guaranties of freedom among us. 
We should not have tolerated the suspension of the habeas corpus at Mr. 
Lincoln's pleasure, or the suppression of newspapers and free speech, or 
have allowed a Judge to be dragged, bleeding, from the Bench, as in the 
case of Judge Carmichael, because he had given the provisions of the Con- 
stitution, securing the liberty of the citizen, in charge to a grand jury. 
Least of all would we ever have consented that an ' ' election " should be 
held and directed and consummated in Maryland, under the proclamation of 
a G-eneral of the United States army. Of all this you may rest assured. 

Unhappily, however, we were powerless, and we knew and felt it. The 
people were unarmed and defenceless. The Governor of the State was a 
reckless partisan, who subordinated his duties to his passions, and had no 
greater respect for his State or himself, than to permit one of his official 
proclamations to be contemptuously •' countermanded," through the news- 
papers, by a recruiting captain of United States volunteers in Baltimore. 
We could have nothing to hope from such an Executive — his " right arm " 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Being less unscrupulous than he, we 
would not invade his constitutional province, and without doing so we 
could do nothing that required Executive co-operation. For even the pro- 
tection of our people, therefore, the execution of our laws, and the pas- 
sive maintenance of the dignity and constitutional rights of our State, we 
were helpless. How absurd to contemplate us as in an aggressive and 
belligerent attitude towards the Government and armies of the United 
States ! Your grave attempt to set up the doctrine that our mere legisla- 
tive proceedings — laws passed and resolutions adopted by us, as a State 
Legislature — were " overt acts" of treason, under a ruling of Chief Jus- 
tice Marshall's, will not deceive any one who has access to the horn-book 
of our common profession. If our resolutions were foolish — or wicked, as 
you would have it — they were still merely the expression of opinions. If 
our laws were unconstitutional, they were simply void, and the peril was 
to those only who might happen to act under them. You have aided in 
passing too many unconstitutional laws, yourself, for any one to doubt, who 
has observed your public career, that you are altogether aware of your 
impunity, as a legislator, in doing so. 

I believe I have answered whatever it is proper I should answer in your 
letter. I have done so, necessarily at great length and with much incon- 
venience to myself, in view of my health and occupations. I have only 
answered you at all, because I felt that you had taken an unfair advantage 
of my previous letter, and I did not choose you should do so unnoticed. 
The cold-blooded and unmanly comment which you make on my reference 
to the indignities and indecencies of our treatment, as prisoners, would 
have deprived you of any right to a reply, as a matter of respect to you 
If it were possible that the Confederate Government had in fact dealt as 
brutally with prisoners, as we were, at times, treated, it would have seemed 
small reason why you should select such brutality as the only point for 
imitation. You are a better judge, however, than I am, of the views of 



31 

your political associates, and I, therefore, presume you speak advisedly, 
when you indicate that the Administration revenges upon kidnapped and 
helpless citizens of the United States — who have nothing to rely on but 
its sense of justice and humanity — the wrongs which it professes to have 
received from enemies in arms. 

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 

S. T. WALLIS. 



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